Forever and a Day
by McKenzieEileen
Summary: Bella and Edward had a seemingly perfect relationship. Although they were both successful in their work forces, Bella couldn't help but think that there was something she needed…something that would fill a void in her life that had been nagging at her.
1. Preface

Preface

Darkness. That's all I could see. The disgusting stench of blood was all around me. Copper. That's how I had described the smell to my mother once when I was younger, but she thought I was just being over dramatic. The cold winter air enveloped my body into a blanket of water and ice, the snow building on top of my fallen torso. I was lying on the concrete outside in a pool of my own blood. I tried to get up, but was only rewarded with a pain so severe that I could only hope my contractions wouldn't be this bad. I was about 4 months pregnant and barely showing. I didn't even know if I was having a boy or a girl yet.

I tried yelling for Edward but the sound got stuck in my throat. He was probably long gone by now. If only I had waited to tell him when I was sure that he could handle it. He didn't say a word after I'd announced what was going to change our lives forever. He just sat in his chair staring first at me, then at my swollen stomach. I waited for a few minutes to let the news sink to ask if he was okay. He didn't respond. I tried to talk to him again, but he still didn't take his eyes off of my belly.

"Edward, are you okay?" I asked again. His eyes snapped to mine, filled to the brim with so much…humor? That wasn't what I was expecting.

"You're joking right?" he'd asked. "This is some kind of reality show isn't it? I'm being taped, huh?" He looked around for what I assumed to be hidden cameras, but when he found none he looked back at m, confusion evident on his beautiful face. I sighed. He was in complete denial.

"No, Edward. This is real. I'm pregnant with your baby. You're going to be a father soon." He looked at me, took one last eye sweep around the restaurant, and abruptly got up from the table. "Edward? Where are you going?" I asked him. He didn't even slow down. He practically ran away from me. 'Great', I thought. I figured I would just wait for him to come back.

After about ten minutes of just sitting there, I got up and went outside to look for him. He was nowhere. It was snowing pretty hard outside, so it was difficult to see what was right in front of your face. I turned left and started walking back to my apartment. That was one of the great things about living in the city, you were close to everything. I don't remember anything after that.

'This is it,' I thought. 'This is how I'm going to die. Alone, pregnant, unmarried, and outside in the freezing weather.' I heard Edward yell before I felt him lift the top half of my body up off of the ground and into his lap. A sudden sharp pain shot through my lower back, around my swollen stomach, and all the way to my toes. I tried to shake the feeling off, but I couldn't move my body. I knew something was internally wrong. I tried to open my mouth to tell him to lay me back down so as not to cause more injury but all that came out of my frozen mouth were incoherent mumbles paired with a hiccup. I had never felt more helpless in my life.

I felt Edward reach into the pocket of his tux for something. Not a second later I heard him say, "Hello? My name is Edward Cullen. I need an ambulance. I just found my girlfriend lying on the ground outside. She's surrounded by a pool of blood that looks to be coming from a gash in her head. Please hurry ma'am…she's pregnant. And they're all I've got."


	2. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

Ugh. Apparently, it was time to get up. I still don't understand how people could come up with the most gut wrenching, nail-on-a-chalk-board type noises. I wasn't sure how much longer my alarm clock was going to survive; I was moments away from committing homicide. I hit the snooze button for some extra sleep, knowing that in seven minutes it would be interrupted again by that damn alarm clock. I knew I needed to get up, but I couldn't make my body rise out of the comfort of my sheets.

I despised Mondays. They were like the extra paperwork your boss gave you before he left for his five day weekend. Today was especially trying because it was my first day of work at a new hospital. I was really getting annoyed with moving all over the country, but with a crazy ex-fiancé, I guess that was what you had to do.

James and I had been together all throughout high school. We were the perfect couple, the one everyone looked up to. He treated me like a princess. It seemed only expectant that after we graduated, we would get married, so we did. Or, almost did. You see, I wasn't a fucking idiot. During senior year, James had started partying a lot more. He hung around with the wrong crowd and had a different girl on his arm every time I saw him. I put up with it for a while because I didn't want to break things off. Everything was just so comfortable, and I didn't like change. I also thought that it was just a phase and that he would eventually grow out of it. When I questioned him about his whore of the week, he just shrugged his shoulders and said, "You're the only one baby. The others are just for looks." I believed him.

I denied his first proposal. I told James that I didn't want to rush into things, and he complied. He really was the sweetest, most intelligent guy I had ever met at the time. Now that I think about it, he was the exact opposite of what I thought, and the term "blinded by love" came to mind. He was tall with sandy blonde hair and blue eyes that resembled the ocean on a breezy summer day. I had often heard that he was the "perfect guy".

Once we went off to college in California, together of course, things got a little harder for us. We moved into an apartment; nothing big, but it was home to us. His partying got heavier and his sobriety level wasn't the best. However, he never cheated on me. The only reason I knew this to be a fact was because he insisted the parties were always at _our _house. He drank and smoked all night, and I was okay with it because I had him.

He was happy with the way we were at first, but it just wasn't enough for him after a while. He started to settle down a little bit. Suddenly, kids and marriage replaced beer and parties on his priority level. After our second year of college, he proposed again. I said that I wanted to wait until I graduated and he was furious. It wasn't what he wanted, and James _always_ got what he wanted.

After I said no, he had calmly stood up and turned away. I also stood to go after him, but I guess he didn't want me to. He'd whirled around and slapped me across the face so hard that I had fallen backwards. I placed my hand on my flaming cheek and yelled at him to get the fuck out of my house.

"_What do you mean my house? This is our god damned house! Who do you think pays the fucking bills around here? Well, let me give you a clue, princess. It ain't you!" he said. _

"_I can pay these bills by myself, asshole! As it is, I'm the one who's been paying your gambling debt, while you sit on your lazy ass and drink beer all day!"_

"_Fuck you, Bella!" he said as he pushed me against the wall by the front door. "You know I've been trying harder, and you know that I want to marry you! Why won't you just marry me? I love you!" The light switch was digging into my upper back so I tried to push him off, but he wouldn't budge. "Bella, I am willing to give up everything for you. Why won't you just marry me?"_

"_James, please let me go. You're hurting me."His grip loosened._

"_Bella, please. I need you. We're perfect for each other! You're going to be a nurse and I'm going to be a doctor. How perfect is that? We're going to have a massive mansion and beautiful kids that look just like you. All you have to do is marry me baby. Please."I looked into his eyes and could see the love he had for me. It broke my heart to see him like that but I couldn't just sit by and let him keep treating me like shit._

"_James, baby, I can't. I'm just not ready, and I don't think you are either. Maybe we should just slow down." As the words fell from my mouth, his grip tightened immediately. His eyes changed and instead of showing love, they showed anger. I could feel his fingers digging into the bones of my arms. I tried to kick him, but he grabbed my throat and said, "Let's get one thing clear, alright? I'm not leaving this house. And you're not leaving me. I _will_ marry you Isabella Swan, if it's the last thing I ever fucking do."_

_ The look in his eyes told me he was as serious as he'd ever been. The feeling that suddenly washed over me caused my entire body to tremble. That night I didn't sleep. I knew I had to get out and that it was going to be difficult, but I had to try. If I didn't give an honest effort, then I'd hate myself. Plus, I didn't want to end up like those girls who just never got the courage to pack their shit and leave. My situation was a little different but that didn't matter. I needed a plan._

Over the course of six months, I had focused primarily on my school and work, so as not to give James a reason to throw a fit. He started to drink again and that caused a lot more bruises for me. He never hit my face, though, because I guess he didn't want anyone to know he was a worthless fuck. I planned to leave him the night before graduation. I played happy and gave him drink after drink. I think he suspected what I was doing after a while, because he started making me drink with him. I knew he was going to do this at some point in the night, so I got him drunk enough to where he didn't want to actually make the drinks, only consume them. All of my drinks were non-alcoholic. The last drink he had, I slipped a sleeping pill into just in case.

After he passed out, I threw all of my things in a bag and left. No note, I just left. I drove for days. I ended up stopping in Maine and stayed in a hotel, paying with cash. I made my stay permanent after about three months of living in a hotel or my car. I had been saving during the last six months I was with James and had a hefty pile of cash on me. After living in Maine for a year and a half, James found me and beat the living hell out of me. I was hospitalized and when asked for a name, I gave them Marie Fallou instead of Isabella Swan so that James wouldn't be able to trace my whereabouts. As soon as I was released, I fled.

My dad, Charlie Swan, was worried sick. I hadn't told him the truth about what happened between James and me; I told him that we broke up and that I just needed a fresh start. As for Maine, I told him I had been jumped on my way home from work. He seemed to believe me but insisted that I take a self defense class. I moved to Arkansas after that, took up jujitsu, cut my hair, and actually bought makeup. I looked like a completely different person, but it didn't make a difference. James still found me, and this time he was not alone. Apparently, he told his girlfriend, Victoria, that I had killed his dog or some stupid shit like that. They both beat the hell out of me, but I put up a decent fight. However, it wasn't enough. They walked away with a couple of broken bones and I was left in some random ally to die.

After my second hospitalization, I moved to Washington to be closer to my dad. Since my mom had died, he hadn't really been close to anyone. I guess being the chief of police kind of made people afraid of you. I lived with him for a few months before I moved into an apartment in Port Angeles and got a job as an NICU nurse. Today was my first day, and I was more than a little nervous about it. I had worked in plenty of hospitals, but not any so close to where I lived when I was younger. People might know me here, and that would make it a lot harder to disappear.

I got up and took a shower. I dressed in blue scrubs with my hair in a messy ponytail. On my way out the door, I noticed that there was something on the ground outside my door. "WOMAN IS BEATEN TO DEATH" was the title on the front page of the newspaper that was apparently delivered to my apartment. It was an awareness article about domestic abuse. It went on to read that Victoria Aimsmen, James' girlfriend, was killed by none other than the fuckface himself. I felt bad for her, despite the fact that she had beaten the living shit out of me. They found her in a hotel somewhere in California, where I assumed she'd been living. James fled the scene and was now a wanted man.

_"They'll never find him"_ I thought to myself. James' family were very prestigious and had a lot of connections to people that could get them out of virtually any situation. The feeling I got when I think of James engulfed my entire being, and I held back a sob. I knew he would come for me; it was just a matter of when. I had been seeing a psychiatrist who told me a very helpful piece of advice that I tried to fall back on when I felt hopeless.

It was something along the lines of there being nothing I could do. Whether James found me or not wasn't in my hands. I could only be ready for when he does.

Those simple words got me through every day. He would find me; I couldn't lie to myself. I just had to be ready to fight when he did. So far, James had only used his hands as a means of beating the shit out of people, and if he kept with that tactic, I would be ready for him.

I threw the paper away on my way down the stairs of my apartment to my car. On the drive, I called my dad.

"Hey, Bells."

"Hey, Dad. Did you read the paper this morning?"

"I sure did. I hope they catch the sorry bastard. I never would have placed James as the type of man that would do this kind of thing to a woman. I'm glad it wasn't you, honey. You on your way to work?"

"Yeah, I am. Hey, I just pulled in, so I'm going to go. You have fun doing whatever it is the police do these days, Dad. And eat a donut for me."

"Love you too, Bells."

He chuckled as he said the last part. I laughed to myself and hung up the phone. I got out of my car and walked up to the front doors of my new life and was overcome with a feeling I couldn't describe. Happiness? No. It was so much better than that.

I walked to the front desk where a woman, strangely resembling a pixie, sat with short spiky hair. She looked up at me with a smile and said, "Isabella Swan, here is your nametag. You are required to wear this nametag at all times, and it may not be covered by any type of object, such as a jacket or your hair. However,-" She leaned in close as if she were telling me a secret that no one else knew, "-you may decorate it any way that you please. The boss can't do shit about _that_." On the last word, she added emphasis as if her boss was an asshole and had tried to forbid this before.

"Oh. Well thank you." _I'm an idiot. _I was never really able to connect or communicate with people the way a normal person would have. I was pretty much a loner throughout my life.

"I can tell what you're thinking, and don't worry. You and I are going to be great friends; I know it." She said this statement as if she could see into some bizarre future. I just smiled at her as she led me down a beautifully decorated hall to where I would be working. Pink, purple, and blue hearts lined every hallway and hung from the ceilings. Valentine's Day was coming up in a matter of days. I looked all around me in wonder at how the decorations got there. The staff?

As if on cue, "Oh, we don't do this," Alice said in a very high pitched voice, "Some kids at a nearby school come and decorate the halls so that the kids have something to look at and be excited about." I was beginning to love this town more and more.

"Hey, Alice?" I asked, bewilderment evident in my voice, "does anyone visit these kids? Like any family or friends?" I suddenly felt very sorry for the kids who had no family to come talk with them.

"Some of them, yes. But others are pretty much stuck here alone. Because of that, each of the staff takes an hour after their shift and visits with the kids who don't have anyone. It isn't a rule really, just common courtesy. The kids absolutely love it! You aren't supposed to pick favorites, but there is one little girl named Renesmee, Nessie for short, and…." She went on about Nessie for about fifteen minutes while she gave me the grand tour. _I love it here, _I though. _Maybe if I play my cards right, I won't have to disappear._


End file.
